The punishment Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) gets for his crimes are more deserving of losing his love and on the same thoughts, causes jitters of unsettling feeling is at the cost of innocent lives. In this elusive person, director Anthony Minghella creates sympathy in us. Ripley has the talent of impersonating any one and it goes beyond that. While kids of his age were studying and partying, he is a hard worker and tries to make some form of living. It takes one scene when he removes the lint from the suits of rich people in men’s room. Life has been hard on him.Minghella likes his location play out a major part in his films. In “English Patient”, the desert brought its dryness, colour and charm to the soap operatic story and here the Italy in 50’s is vibrant and suspicious reflecting Ripley. He is the good guy whom the women will admire but never date. He plays piano well. He is appreciated by Mr. Greenleaf (James Rebhorn) and by Ripley’s loaned Princeton coat assumes him to know his son Dickie (Jude Law). Rather than denying, he wants to be identified and the fakeness origins to exponentially follow him till the end. It keeps piling on and on when we as the audience expect him to be caught but subconsciously want him to escape. We do not wish him for good life, but at that present moment when he is circling around for his imagination to kick in and get him out of the miserable trap, we want him to come clean.
On the request of Mr. Greenleaf, Ripley comes to Italy to fetch back Dickie a guy who plays people like dolls. He is a player and a kid. He has privileges what Ripley would not have even thought of. Dickie in his luxurious life of having fun with his fiancée Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow) fascinates Ripley. It is odd for some one of Dickie’s stature of spoiled high class kid to get acquainted towards a “nobody” like Ripley. But there are reasons, first being Ripley an American in Italy which immediately brings some untold closeness and secondly, he follows Dickie like a puppy.
The development of the obsession of this life Dickie is having for Ripley is where Minghella paints his story telling he used for “The English Patient”. Patiently and colourfully we love for the daily events Dickie does. He flirts with girls, has a beautiful lady who loves him, great friends and the energy he carries around. He is the guy who everyone aspires to be and Ripley falling for him is no surprise. These two characters that are miles apart in various aspects represent very strong similarity under the table. Dickie is rich Ripley in lot many ways, in fact more spoiled and ruthless. He plays every one of his control and fakes his own love. Ripley’s confrontation of the truth just brings the ugly side of this charming character.
When Ripley takes up the identity of Dickie and how he cleverly connives every person possible to play accordingly, the story turns into a noir thriller. The real “talented” Ripley shows up and jujitsu the people’s questions in ease and comfort. Generally in identity stealing, the films transpires them into the fake person and slowly forget the real him/her from them. In this, Ripley is still Ripley and we know he is faking and while he might be a good impersonator, he still is himself. Because he is the rich Ripley, how Dickie was.
Who is Mr. Ripley? Why does he risks to the extreme when this ability is of a good hand to get a respectable job of financial relief? It is the want and the desire, then the ease to be a free loader. Dickie is his trump card both personally and financially. But the problem is he cannot keep up with the real competition when Freddie (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) comes in. It is when we truly see him, threatened, clueless and petrified. How ever talented he is Freddie knows people like Ripley because he knows he does not fit the bill. The bill of classy, charismatic, cold and unpredictable. And in Matt Damon’s Ripley, we see him consistently trying to be that. This might be the best performance Damon has ever put till date. While he fits the job in the Bourne series and Ocean’s team, this is where he builds up the character down from the scratch, then changes in the screen and tells us he is wearing this mask in some tight lipped weary looks and wide mouthed creepy smiles. We really doubt whether the life he is faking gives some happiness to him at all. It is more of eluding people every time and living in paranoid.
Frank Abagnale of “Catch Me If you Can” was an impostor too but he was a confused kid with unknown consequences. Thankfully his crimes did not lead him to bloodsheds. Ripley is a confused kid but not enough to be a kid to not know his consequences. It is the urge and fear of losing everything drives him mad and does things out of blunder instincts. Minghella brings a tight thriller with a complicated character. He never understands who he is till the end and that may be the reason he wants to know from his lover.
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